


when stars collide

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Mass Effect 2, No Major Character Death, Post-Horizon (Mass Effect), but deals with the aftermath of the ME2 opening, extremely gratuitous self-indulgent fic alert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27439783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Horizon was hell.  Only thing to do is drink it off and move on.  Except there's Shepard, sitting at the bar alone; and what is he going to do, leave her there?Completely self-indulgent "what if Shepard and Kaidan talked after Horizon" fic.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janiejanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janiejanine/gifts).



> Janie requested Shenko! A long time ago! Like right after I did the last chapter of Tali and Kal a long time ago! A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO. Anyway, continuing in that Tali/Kal vein of “extremely self-indulgent fic,” I present you with “that one time in ME2 where Catie Shepard stole her sister’s ship and left her on the Citadel as an apology for how she behaved on Horizon.”
> 
> (for other fics featuring Emma Shepard and her boisterous twin Catie, please see [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6036541/chapters/13842049) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1435828/chapters/3019393).)
> 
> currently unbeta'd and there's more than these two chapters, which I'll post once it's polished up and finished, but hey, happy N7 Day!
> 
> premise being that during Emma’s, er, _hiatus_ between ME1 and ME2, Catie got roped into some of the performative aspects of Being Commander Shepard (wreaked havoc with the bioscanners, lots of ‘splainin’ to do), with Kaidan being her wingman to fill in the gaps. Both of them hated this but they also kinda bonded over hating it. Both were on Horizon, which therefore mostly consisted of Catie yelling at Emma about ruining her life _again_ , and Emma just mostly taking it in silence, and then at the end weakly suggesting to Kaidan that he come with, at which point he gave his Alliance soldier response and then left.
> 
> And then Kaidan and Catie went back to report to Anderson and Catie did a lot more yelling and then Anderson is like “um, you know she really was dead, and I told her to work with Cerberus, everyone take a deep breath please,” and then everyone feels terrible it’s all terrible.
> 
> And then not long after that the SR-2 swings by the Citadel for something and then promptly leaves for Aeia, which is on the butt-end of the galaxy as we all know, taking with it the wrong Commander Shepard, leaving Emma alone on the Citadel with literally nothing to do but go to bars, she guesses.
> 
> and after that needlessly complicated explanation, our story begins…
> 
> (aspects of this story are heavily influenced by That One Fic I Read That One Time, with a touch of @sinvraal for good measure, apologies for anything I’ve outright stolen)
> 
> (except for Chin, I outright stole her from @faejilly without permission and if I’ve butchered the character it’s all my fault)
> 
> (i love all y'all very much <3)

“Take a week,” Anderson had said, giving them both a look of understanding. “Rest up, relax, think about what you want to do next. I’ll be in touch about your next assignments.”  
  
They’d left together in silence, and then, on the elevator, Catie had said, “If she’s really back—”  
  
“Hm,” he’d said.  
  
“—I’m going straight to intel. Some nice, cushy little analyst job where I don’t have to talk to anyone. Holed up in a bunker for twelve hours a day.” She’d sighed and leaned against the elevator wall and said, “Shit.”  
  
“Yeah,” he’d agreed.  
  
And she’d looked sidelong at him, those familiar eyes with the completely wrong look in them, and said, “If it helps, knowing my sister, she’s probably still totally—”  
  
“Not,” he’d said, “ready to think about that.”  
  
“Right,” she’d said, “right,” and they’d gone their separate ways and he hadn’t seen her since.  
  
Which was fine. They usually needed space after a mission, and with everything that had happened with this one…well.  
  
He spent the first three days in his little studio on Zakera Ward, nothing fancy or flashy, a half-wall to separate the kitchenette from the bedroom, though he’d never bothered to buy appliances for the kitchenette and the mattress on the Murphy bed wasn’t nearly so comfortable as the couch he’d bought for the corner. He spent a day catching up on emails, a day half-starting more mindless vids than he could count, and a day working out; and at the end of them he still felt the grief trying to swallow him whole and conceded that he needed people, if only because he didn’t have enough alcohol in the apartment to drown his sorrows by himself.  
  
So he scrolled through his list of contacts, pinged a couple of people he thought might still be around, received enthusiastic responses, and forced himself to take a shower. By the time he emerged, he’d received another message, this one from Dr. Nasrid Tavokoli, saying she’d heard from Chin that everyone was getting together for drinks and she was glad to hear he’d made it back safely and looked forward to seeing him.  
  
He ducked back under the showerhead, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes and letting the water pound regret into him. He tried to take a deep breath and got water up his nose for his efforts, but coughing it out cleared the initial panic from his mind. He shut off the water and grabbed his towel to dry off, going through the motions while he wondered what he wanted to do.  
  
Be an adult about it, obviously. Telling her not to come was out of the question—she was Chin’s friend too, after all—and in a group setting maybe he could avoid her enough to give the initial impression that things had changed before directly confronting the issue. The issue being that she was lovely, really lovely, but that he…what?  
  
He rubbed the towel over his face, closed his eyes, saw Shepard, _Shepard_ , helmet dangling from her hand, sweat glistening on her forehead, expression numb except for her eyes, lost and hurting and crying out for help and resigned to oblivion all at once. A Cerberus patch on her shoulder.  
  
_“She came to see me,” Anderson said. “Didn’t know much and understood even less, but seems like Cerberus spent a whole lot of credits trying to bring her back. And somehow, they did it.”_  
  
Impossible.  
  
But he’d _seen_ her and the worst part was that it had seemed… _like her_ , really her, and if the person he’d seen really was her, then—  
  
But who was to say she was the same? He wasn’t. He’d changed. For the worse, probably, for the more bitter and cautious and withdrawn, the more cynical. He’d loved her and lost her and had to lie about everything he cared about and he’d been left with so little to try to pull himself back together that if he was only a shell of a human being then…and he’d been _trying_ , hadn’t he? Trying to fill in the hole. Trying to figure out _who he was_ , rather than just what he _wasn’t_ , anymore.   
  
It wasn’t like she could just waltz back to life, back into _his_ life, and somehow make everything he’d gone through _okay_ , somehow undo the damage she’d done when she’d been ripped out of it.  
  
He’d moved—  
  
_“Kaidan,” and she’d sounded so quiet, so sad, like she knew him to his bones and knew what he’d say and couldn’t help asking anyway. “Could use someone like you on the crew.”  
  
_—on.  
  
And the sound of his name in her voice had nearly made him turn around, nearly made him say _yes_ , if only to hear her say it again.  
  
He groaned, wadded up the towel and tossed it in the corner, and then rubbed his face and retrieved it and hung it up so it could dry. No use forgetting about it and then coming back in three months to a mildew colony. And in any case, regardless of how much he’d _moved on_ , he certainly shouldn’t leave Nasrid hanging while he got his feet under him.  
  
(What was Shepard going to do, _come back to him_? Were they just going to pick up where they’d left off? He’d left her in the dust; he’d made his position pretty clear, regardless of whether or not it was still his position now. What was he waiting around for? Why not keep moving on?)  
  
( _Knowing my sister_ , and he left the rest of her sentence unsaid.)  
  
He got dressed in a black shirt and black trousers, nothing fancy or flashy, just the only clean clothes he could find, and so he set a reminder to go to the laundromat before the week was up. And then he messaged Nasrid, a noncommittal thumbs up, and then he thought about messaging Chin or Kightley to warn them what he was planning, but that would have involved too many questions, and so finally he resumed moping aimlessly around his apartment, finishing off what snack food he had lying around until it was finally time to head to the bar.  
  
He got sidetracked on the way there by a quarian looking for a volus vendor, some poor kid on his Pilgrimage searching for ship parts, and by the time he’d sorted that out he was half an hour late to his own party. He took the time on transit to do a last scroll through the headlines—hardly anything about Horizon, and he wondered why the brass were so desperate to keep it quiet—and by the time he arrived he was definitely ready to challenge Chin to that asari drinking game she kept trying to get him to try.  
  
His omni-tool dinged. Chin. _Where are you, man? Table in the back corner, under the green light_.  
  
He walked into the dimly lit interior, wincing against the thumping bass—served him right for letting Buhari choose the location—as he made his way to the bar and ordered a round of asari ales for the group. Once he had them very carefully in hand, he turned and made his way to the back corner, narrowly dodging what passed for a dance floor as he looked for—the green light—  
  
“Alenko!” he heard once he made it past a speaker, and he turned to his left, saw a hand waving, and adjusted his course. A few steps later and he’d cleared a crowd of tall tables and saw—  
  
“Alenko!” Chin called again, and then she jerked a thumb at the person sitting next to her. “Hey, did you know Shepard has a sister?”  
  
He saw her _move_ —threw her hand out—and then he felt the brush of her biotics and those were wrong, all wrong, entirely too powerful, a new amp, maybe? and the frequency was— _off_. And then he looked down and realized she’d caught the drinks he’d been carrying, because apparently he’d dropped them, and after a moment of staring at them dumbly he carefully plucked them from the air and resumed carrying them to the table.  
  
They were all there—Chin, Kightley, and Buhari, all in varying stages of marine-on-shore-leave, and Nasrid looking a little too dolled up for comfort. He had drinks for them, and mechanically passed them around, trying not to look at anyone directly, trying to focus on what they were saying, but everyone was talking over each other.  
  
“—thought it was Catie—” Nasrid said.  
  
“—and so I said _Shepard_ , and of course she turned around, because she’s Shepard too, _get it_?” said Buhari, laughing as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.  
  
“—they’re _twins_ —” Kightley chimed in. “Had _no idea_ —”  
  
“So we told her to sit with us!” Chin finished, her voice the clearest as he straightened from setting down drinks, as he failed to take the open seat, as he failed not to look at her. “Did you know?”  
  
He stared at her but he wasn’t really seeing her, wasn’t really seeing anything, because if he saw her he’d have to— _see_ ; and so he just said, “Yeah, I did.”  
  
“I should go,” she said immediately.  
  
A chorus of “No!”s sounded immediately, and he joined them, stumbling sideways into his seat before finally landing on it, his hands clutching the drink in front of him.  
  
“No,” she said, “it’s fine, really, it’s fine, you all enjoy your drinks, thanks—”  
  
“Don’t worry, Alenko’s good for it,” Buhari said, waving down a turian waitress.  
  
“I, for one, am deeply intrigued by this _secret twin sister_ thing,” Kightley said, his shoulders straining the seams of his shirt. “How has this never come up?”  
  
“You’ve only met Shepard, what, once?” Chin said. “Besides, she’s got an intel background. She doesn’t want you to know something, you’re not going to know it.”  
  
“Right, because _you’re_ such buddy-buddies with the Hero of the Citadel,” Buhari laughed, his voice deep and rich and soothing.  
  
“Only when it comes to getting Alenko out of his apartment,” Chin retorted, “but she’s _very_ good at it.”  
  
“Actually,” he said, and then he fell silent.  
  
“Hey,” Nasrid said, and he closed his eyes against the too-casual friendly tone of her voice. “Nice to see you.”  
  
“Actually,” Kightley prompted.  
  
He opened his eyes and looked at her long enough to say, “Actually, _this_ is the Hero of the Citadel,” and then tilted his head back and drank as much of his asari ale as he could in one go.  
  
When he pulled the drink away from his lips he discovered an awkward silence as the others looked between the two of them, as she looked very steadily at a point just past Nasrid’s shoulder. “Say what now?” Kightley asked.  
  
He nodded in her direction, which was easier than looking at her. “She’s the Hero of the Citadel,” he said. “Catie’s just—”  
  
“Better at being heroic,” she suggested.  
  
“—not embedded with a terrorist organization,” he said, and then anger bubbled up within him and he seized on it. “What the hell are you doing here?”  
  
The entire table went still and she sighed heavily, looked down at the table, and then opened up her omni-tool and flit her fingers across it. His _pinged_ , and he opened a message. A forwarded message, originally from Catie:  
  
_Hey, sis. Just wanted to let you know the_ Normandy _is safe and sound and headed for parts far away. Had a debrief with Anderson and…look, I’m sorry. Sounds like you hit the ground running and could use a break. We’ll talk more when I get back, and don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your ship.  
  
Love you._  
  
He stared at it long enough that Chin rested her chin on his shoulder in order to read it too. “She stole the _Normandy_?” she said incredulously.  
  
“I thought the _Normandy_ was destroyed,” Buhari said. “That was—”  
  
“She was,” Shepard said, closing her omni-tool, her voice stilted. “This one’s…new. It’s…a long story. But yes. My sister stole my ship and left me here to…relax.”  
  
She sounded ready to bolt, and part of him wished she would. Part of him wanted to throttle Catie, and part of him wanted to thank her. But he mostly felt— _tired_ , an exhaustion he heard echoes of in her voice.  
  
“Well,” Chin said firmly, “you came to the right place. We’re just here to a little post-op de-drinking, am I right, Alenko?”  
  
In answer he finished his drink, and as he set it down, Kightley said, “Wait, if _she’s_ the Hero of the Citadel—”  
  
“Too many questions,” he said as the turian waitress arrived with another ale for Shepard. “Another round, please,” he said to her.  
  
“Five or six?” the waitress asked.  
  
He opened his mouth, stopped when he saw Shepard pick up her drink, watched as she drank, and drank, and drank, silencing the table again. They stared at her as she set the empty glass on the table and wiped her lips on the back of her hand. “I’m good,” she said.  
  
“Six,” he said, and the waitress nodded and slipped away.  
  
“—wouldn’t that make _her_ your CO?” Kightley finished.  
  
“Wait,” Buhari said, “I thought Shepard was his CO.”  
  
“They’re _both_ Shepards,” Chin said, but she was studying him now and he stared into his empty glass and tried to remember if he’d ever said too much when they’d been able to meet over the past two years. “There’s Catie, and you said your name’s Emma?”  
  
“Emma Shepard,” Buhari said, and then he smacked his forehead and said, “Star of Terra at Elysium! I knew I’d heard your name.”  
  
She sighed again, brushed her hair behind her ear, and _that_ he saw, though he still couldn’t quite look at her face. Her hair looked the same. “That’s me,” she said. “Were you there?”  
  
He nodded. “I was on the _Agincourt_ for the Blitz. Wasn’t so bad. Heard you lot had a hell of a time on the ground.”  
  
“Well,” she said, and something familiar crept into her tone, echoes of a soldierly camaraderie, “it wasn’t sunshine and roses, that’s for sure. Did you know a Pressly on the _Agincourt_?”  
  
“Petty Officer Pressly? Sure did,” Buhari said, leaning back in his chair. “Stubborn son of a bitch, good at his job. He took his commission after the Blitz and got transferred. Guess he’d be a commander by now.”  
  
“He went down with the _Normandy_ ,” Kaidan said, looking down into his empty glass and wondering when the waitress would get back. He should’ve slipped her an early tip.  
  
“Did he? Damn,” Buhari said, and he raised his glass. “Here’s to us.”  
  
His glass was empty but he raised it with the others anyway. “Who’s like us?” Chin asked.  
  
“Damn few,” Kightley answered.  
  
“And they’re all dead,” Shepard said dryly, and they clinked their glasses together.  
  
“Is this a military thing?” Nasrid asked after they drank, he shaking the last few drops from his glass.  
  
“It’s a marine thing,” Chin said. “Don’t worry, you did fine.”  
  
Nasrid flashed a smile at him and he tried to smile back but felt it get stuck somewhere between nervous laughter and a grimace, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Shepard very alertly not looking at either of them.  
  
“So you’re Alenko’s old CO,” Kightley said, leaning back in his seat and looking her up and down.  
  
“Sure,” she said. “How do you all know each other?”  
  
“Alenko and I graduated and commissioned together,” Chin said. “And I picked up this lug,” indicating Kightley, “on my last tour.”  
  
“Served with Kightley on the _Madrid_ ,” Buhari said. “Just luck we’re here at the same time. Refueling.”  
  
“ _I_ just got back from a cruise,” Chin said loftily. “Five-day tour of the Serpent Nebula. Treated myself. Tried to get Nasrid to come with,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but _somebody_ had to work.”  
  
“Broken bones won’t set themselves,” Nasrid said with a shrug and a smile. “I used up all my time off going home for my brother’s wedding.”  
  
“So you two know each other?” Shepard asked carefully, and he barely contained a despairing laugh.  
  
“Oh, yes! Mariska and I went to high school together,” Nasrid said, beaming at Chin. “I keep trying to help her meet people who aren’t Alliance and she keeps introducing me to marines.”  
  
“ _Handsome_ marines,” Chin countered, winking at Kaidan, who distinctly wanted to shrivel up and die.  
  
“That’s true,” Nasrid conceded with a little smile, taking a delicate sip of her drink.  
  
Thankfully the turian waitress returned with another round, though when he went to take a drink he found he didn’t have the taste for ale anymore. He needed a shot. Or three. But he also needed to keep a clear mind and not say anything that would incriminate him. He set his glass down and sighed.  
  
“You all right, Alenko?” Kightley asked.   
  
_No_ was the obvious answer, but he settled for, “Mission went a little south, that’s all,” and to demonstrate that he was going to deal with this in a professional manner, he took another long drink.  
  
“Sorry to hear that,” Kightley said. “Anything you need to talk about?”  
  
“Can’t,” he said succinctly.  
  
“I knew you’d gone to the dark side,” Chin said triumphantly, nudging him with her shoulder. “Shepard’s a bad influence. Not you,” she said, glancing at Shepard. “I’m sure you were a very good influence.”  
  
He heard her take a breath as if to say something, pause, and though he stared at the table he could _see_ her raise her eyes to the ceiling as she thought. “I mean,” she said finally, “I always thought Alenko was the good influence on the rest of us.” Another pause, and then she said, “The rest of us are all pretty terrible, one way or another.”  
  
“Says the Star of Terra,” Buhari said. “Hero of the Citadel. First human SPECTRE. Sounds like a pretty good example to me.”  
  
“But if you’re—” Kightley started, and then he looked at Kaidan with a frown. “Why—”  
  
“Like I said,” Shepard said, “Catie’s better at the whole heroics thing. And,” she paused again, presumably to chug her ale, “like Alenko said, I’m currently embedded with a terrorist organization, so. Puts a damper on things.”  
  
“Now _that_ sounds like it’s above my paygrade,” Chin said.  
  
“I don’t think it’s technically classified,” she said thoughtfully. “To hell with it. I’m chasing down the Collectors, trying to figure out why they’re kidnapping colonists, why they only seem to want humans. There’s…a hunch that the Reapers,” and his head popped up and he looked at her, “are involved, but we haven’t managed to prove anything.”  
  
She had one hand on her drink, gestured vaguely with the other, but her _face_ …was wrong, and it wasn’t the missing scar on her cheek (and how many times had he kissed that scar? not half as many as he’d dreamed of doing it); she had a starved, hollow look about her, hunted and lonely and well aware that she sounded like a lunatic. He’d never, not even when they were impounded on the Citadel, seen her so close to… _despair_ , and the hollow space she’d left behind filled with a burning ache that made it hard to breathe.  
  
“That sounds important,” Nasrid said politely, when no one else said anything.  
  
“Reapers?” Kightley asked.  
  
“Super-geth, right?” Chin said. “Partly responsible for the attack on the Citadel?” She nudged Kaidan again. “You were there, you fought them, right?”  
  
“I was there,” he said, still staring at her, acutely aware she was avoiding his gaze. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”  
  
“And you’re embedded with a terrorist organization,” Buhari said slowly. “Which one?”  
  
“The one that’s hardest to kill,” she said dryly. “I sort of…woke up in the middle of it.”  
  
“But _why_?” The words came from him unbidden and he wished he hadn’t said them; too much pain flooded into the air, leaving the table silent again, turning Shepard’s eyes dark and empty.  
  
“Hell,” she said, “if I know,” and then she took a long drink. “Somebody gave them a body. I don’t know who, or why,” she said when she was done, and now she did meet his gaze, and he’d never seen such sorrow in her, either. “I’m sorry.”  
  
He closed his eyes, and that made her voice a little easier to bear, because how many times had he dreamed her apology? _I’m sorry_ , she’d say, little more than a ghost drifting a hand down his cheek. _I didn’t mean to leave you._  
  
But she wasn’t a ghost; she was _here_ , if it really was her, if it was _really_ her, if anything was real, and damn, he felt a migraine coming on, his head coming apart at the seams as he tried to make sense of—  
  
“Do you two need to talk?” Nasrid asking, of course, because she was a kind person and a good person and deserved better than the wreck of a human being that he was, and that was Chin’s fault for not thinking better of her friend. Also because she was a civilian, and didn’t know the full implications of them needing to _talk_ , the reprimand waiting on the other side.  
  
“I’m good,” he lied without opening his eyes.  
  
“Yeah,” Shepard echoed, and then he heard her chair scraping the ground. “Sorry for crashing your party. I should go.”  
  
No one protested this time, just offered bewildered good-bye-and-good-lucks, and when he opened his eyes again they were all staring at him. “You sure you’re good, man?” Kightley said.  
  
“Like I said,” he said, finishing off his drink. “Mission went a little south.”  
  
“‘A little south’ as ‘in your old CO is working for terrorists’ south?” Chin asked. “Damn, man, I don’t have the clearance, but if you need to talk—”  
  
“It’s fine,” he said firmly. “I’m fine, she’s fine—”  
  
“Look,” Nasrid said, “my specialty may be internal medicine, but she is _not_ fine.” He looked at her with trepidation; she gave him only pity in response. “I like you, Kaidan, but you really should talk to her.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“Kaidan,” Chin said, and she hadn’t called him that since the time they were both drunk after a field exercise and she’d slung an arm over his shoulders and called him _the best brother I never had_ and firmly quashed any potential _thing_ that he might have been thinking about. When he looked at her she had a faint half-smile, as if she were remembering that night, too. She looked at him for a long moment, as if fitting a few missing pieces together, and when she was done she said, “She’s right.”  
  
“The Hero of the Citadel?” Kightley said.  
  
“Damn,” Buhari commented, taking a drink.  
  
“No,” Chin said firmly, shooting them a poisonous look he’d received before, and he winced on their behalf, “comment.” Both men held up their hands in surrender, and she looked back to him. “Now finish your drink and go.”  
  
“I—” he tried again, but her expression brooked no argument, and so he turned back to Nasrid’s pity. “Sorry,” he said. “I—”  
  
“Hey,” she said, her smile sweet, and for a flash he saw the life he could have led, skipping along the dim surface of life, avoiding going down into the dark and the dirty—but never emerging into the glorious light, either. “It happens. Just means it’s my turn to find a date for Mariska.” Chin groaned, and she said, “Chin up!”  
  
“I cannot believe you are still making that joke,” Chin said, and then she looked at Kaidan and jerked her head in the direction Shepard has gone. “Go on. And Kaidan?”  
  
“Yeah?” he said, standing up under the sheer force of her gaze.  
  
“Good luck,” she said, and she raised a glass to him.  
  
He offered a salute in response, and she laughed and waved him off, and his feet carried him away from the table before his head had caught up with what, exactly, she was proposing that he do, and he stopped dead in the middle of the dance floor and wondered what in the hell he was supposed to do next.  
  
An asari slithered up to him. “Hey, human,” she said. “Wanna dance?”  
  
“No,” he said, and that at least eliminated one course of action, and he stumbled his way off the dance floor towards the bar. And there she was, elbows resting on the bar, back to him, shoulders hunched; and he was infinitely familiar with the back of her head, and the posture wasn’t quite right and her hair was a touch longer, and who knew what lay lurking beneath it all, what traps Cerberus had laid for unsuspecting Alliance marines.  
  
He didn’t have to find out. And the worst part was that he knew that _she_ knew that, and she’d understand if he didn’t want to. If he didn’t try. So many things about her were wrong but that look in her eye that _understood_ —understood, without either of them having to say anything—that had been the same. And if she understood why he wouldn’t come after her, then he understood what would happen to her if he didn’t—or at least, what would have happened to the woman he’d known.  
  
He didn’t have to try. And if he tried, he didn’t have to follow through. And—  
  
She was looking at the door, and he was walking towards her.  
  
He slid in carefully next to her at the bar, leaving half a meter between them, eschewing a stool just as she’d done. She stayed hunched, her hand curled around a shotglass, and for a moment he looked at her and wondered what the hell he thought he was going to do to— _help_ ; and then he signaled the bartender and ordered a whiskey. Her head lifted slightly at the sound of his voice, and so he leaned harder on the bar and said, not quite turning to her, “Hey.”  
  
She sighed as if the last of her breath were leaving her body, caving in on herself, the knuckles of her hand white as she clutched her drink. “Hey,” she said, too quietly, and he immediately wanted to—to put his hand over hers, to reassure her. So that was how this was going to go.  
  
He put his hands flat on the bar until his drink arrived, at which point he tossed half of it back. It burned on the way down and loosened his tongue, and he said, like an idiot, “So how’s the _Normandy_?”  
  
She snorted and lifted her shotglass—and he didn’t recognize the contents, but even from a distance the smell made his eyes water—but set it back down without taking a drink. “Seriously?”  
  
“Sure,” he said.  
  
“Okay,” she said, and then she rolled the shotglass between her palms, twisting it back and forth as she spoke. “It’s a military-class vessel built by civilians. It’s big. It has actual bunks in the crew quarters. The main battery is insane. It has a bar.”  
  
“It has a _bar_?” he repeated, momentarily distracted from the morass of his current emotional state.  
  
From the slight upturn of the corner of her mouth, she was momentarily distracted, too. “A bar,” she confirmed. “It has two observation decks and one of them has a bar and the other one’s some kind of…lounge? Just a space with couches and a bookshelf. It’s weird.” She looked down at the shotglass, tilted it a little towards herself. “My quarters have a fish tank.”  
  
“You have a fish tank?” Apparently he was doomed to repetition.  
  
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s pretty sweet, actually.” She sniffed. “I was thinking about spending tomorrow hitting up all the pet stores on the Citadel to see if I’ve missed anything. And maybe replace a couple of specimens.” She winced. “I missed a feeding early on. It wasn’t pretty.”  
  
He stared at her, and she finally turned her head enough for him to see most of her face. “What?” she asked, a wry smile on her face.  
  
“Fish,” he said again. “You have a fish tank?”  
  
“I have a fish tank,” she said. “I am now a fish hobbyist. I collect fish. And model starships, apparently. There’s a display case and I don’t know—why,” she said, and then she looked down at the bar. “Don’t know _why_ for a lot of things these days.”  
  
“Mm,” he said.  
  
“Used to not bother me so much,” she went on, “you know? Soldier only knows what a soldier needs to know, and all that. And maybe I’m just misjudging what all I need to know right now, but…” She shook her head and shrugged. “Anyway, the _Normandy_ ’s fine. Better than fine. Just different.”  
  
He nodded, absorbing this, absorbing _her_. The voice was just right, the cadence and pitch perfect, if the tone a little more self-deprecating than before. Her eyebrows were right, too, and the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiled—she’d always smiled more from the eyes, and after two years of Catie’s sunny grins, seeing the old familiar subtlety was…well, doing a number on him. The scar was gone, but her lips looked—fine, and her nose was the same, and clearly whatever Cerberus had done they’d done their best to get the body right—and it wasn’t like he wasn’t somewhat invested in that—but the _mind_ …and the soul, if such a thing could even be said to exist, let alone in the case of someone who should, by all rights, be dead. If you brought someone back, did the soul come with them?  
  
He didn’t have to find out. He didn’t have to try. He didn’t have to set himself up for almost inevitable disappointment (and lurking on the edge of his consciousness was a warning, screaming in bright red lights, _don’t be fooled, don’t be sucked in, you’ve lost her already, don’t be a fool and lose her again, it almost killed you the last time_ ).  
  
And then he opened his mouth and said, “And you?”  
  
Old habits were, apparently, harder to kill.  
  
She didn’t answer immediately, and he almost walked away. She sighed again, more quietly this time, and said to her shotglass, “You don’t have to do this.”  
  
“Do what?” he asked lamely.  
  
“Any of this,” she said. “Not if you don’t want to. I—look, I understand. It’s been two years. Apparently. I’m working within the organization that nearly killed my sister. It’s—” and the liquid in the glass rippled as her hand shook “—awful, and you don’t have to get involved.”  
  
He turned all the way towards her and she stared determinedly at a point just beyond the bar, and he thought: she’s serious. She’d let him walk away, no strings attached, and she’d bear it without complaint. And he thought she could hear the alarms echoing in his mind, that she knew exactly what they were saying, that she was trying to protect him. (And the alarms said, _she’s only trying to suck you in, who knows what they’ve done to her, don’t let her destroy you again_.)   
  
She still wanted to—protect, and to serve. That was the same.  
  
So he said, “I’m sorry about Horizon.”  
  
She glanced at him swiftly, her eyes wide and terrified, before she resumed staring straight ahead. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I know how Catie is. And I know what you were thinking.” She winced at that, at her presumption, and added hastily, “It—it wasn’t anything I hadn’t already thought myself. That I don’t—keep thinking. I…” and she sighed again, “get it.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough, and he cleared his throat. “I—”  
  
“That’s why we made such a good team,” she said thoughtfully. “Never did have to do much explaining. You just always…understood.” And then she shook her head and said, her voice trembling, “I’m sorry, you can just—”  
  
“Hey,” he said, and he instinctively reached for her, but she recoiled and he stopped, his hand hanging in the air, feeling awkward and not a little hurt as she shook her head.  
  
“I—” She shook her head again. “I can’t. Not—not here. Someone’s watching. They’re always watching.”  
  
“You mean—your…organization?” he said carefully, lifting his head and scanning the room. “You’ve seen—”  
  
She shook her head again. “You never _see_ them,” she said. “But they’re always watching. Anderson’s office is pretty safe. There’s probably places they don’t have completely scoped out. And I don’t think they’ve got any active bugs _in_ me. But the uniforms are almost certainly bugged. It’s why I ditch them every time I come here.”  
  
He blinked and focused on what she was wearing: a navy jumpsuit, the sort maintenance workers donned before wading into a sewage byline. Completely unadorned, not a Cerberus logo in sight. And it didn’t even fit her all that well. His gaze flit back to her face and she grinned wolfishly. “I bought this one at an elcor shop. Only thing he had for bipeds in the whole store. Left the uniform at a volus food stand. I was…only expecting to be here for a few hours. And now if I spend anything, they know I’m not on the ship, and I don’t want to know what happens when they figure that out.”  
  
His gaze fell on the drink in her hand. “So how are you paying for that?”  
  
She pressed her lips together, and then admitted, “I put it on your tab. Your friend Chin was buying for the whole table in your name.”  
  
He rolled his eyes and she laughed. She _laughed_ , not loud or long, just a brief, weary _haha_ , but she looked as surprised as he felt, if not as _jolted_ , as if he was suddenly awake after a very, very long hibernation.  
  
“Are you at least going to drink it?” he asked, and she laughed again.  
  
“I was going to,” she said, “and then you showed up, and I thought I’d better be at least…a little sober. It’s ryncol,” she said, as he reached for it.  
  
He immediately withdrew. “That’ll kill you,” he said stupidly.  
  
She shook her head. “Just knocks me out for twenty minutes or so. Not that I’ve timed it.” She winced again. “I’ve timed it.”  
  
“Why?” he asked, torn between horror and fascination.  
  
“For science,” she said, but the haunted look crept back into her eyes. “Because the cybernetics are hell. Because I need to know how long it leaves me out of commission, for when I want to be…out of commission.” She lifted the glass again and said, quietly, “Like I said, it’s awful.”  
  
He reached for the glass again, and when she didn’t pull away he placed his palm over the top of it and gently pushed it back to the bar, acutely aware of how close their fingers were, careful to keep them apart. She allowed this, and said, as he withdrew his hand, “It’s not all been bad. There’s some good. My team is,” and she paused, tilted her head as she considered something, and finished with, “coming along.”  
  
“Yeah?” he said. “Who’ve you got?”  
  
A fond expression came over her, and then she shook her head and said, “Someone’s watching.” And then she looked at him again and he _saw_ her retreat, saw her carefully withdraw any and all emotion as neatly as she packed away her guns at the end of a mission. “Thanks for talking,” she said, “but really, you don’t have to—”  
  
She was leaving. She was leaving again and she’d been gone _again_ and he panicked and because he was panicking he said, “Come back to my place,” without thinking at all.  
  
She went very still, her eyes wide again, though she was otherwise expressionless. “It should be safe,” he said lamely. “I can do a sweep, I’ve got a couple protocols on my omni-tool—”  
  
“Seriously?” she said, eyes still wide, mouth set in a solemn line as she searched his face.  
  
He swallowed hard. “I just thought—if you wanted—somewhere safe,” he said. “Just to talk.”  
  
_Just_ to talk, and that was the truth, his mind a full-blown siren preventing him from considering anything else ( _she’s lying, it’s a lie, it’s all a lie, they want something, don’t do this to yourself, don’t DO this_ ); but his fingers twitched with the echoes of long-dormant memory, betraying his honesty.  
  
She wasn’t looking at his fingers. “Just to talk,” she repeated, and then she nodded a little, _safe_ , and he wondered what sort of alarms were sounding in _her_ head, what she feared, what she wanted. What had run her so entirely ragged. “Okay,” she said finally. “If you’re sure.”  
  
He laughed in turn, weary and disbelieving, and said, “Sure.”  
  
Her eyes dropped and her lips parted and then pressed together. “Address?”  
  
“You can follow—”  
  
“I can’t be seen leaving here with you,” she said, giving him a fond and pitying smile. “They’re almost certainly watching you too. And here,” she said, and flipped open her omni-tool, typing something out. “You might find these frequencies useful in your sweep.”  
  
His omni-tool _pinged_ and he found himself scrolling through various transmitting frequencies well outside standard Alliance bounds. “Is it safe for you to be sending messages on that thing?” he asked, nodding to her omni-tool.   
  
She shrugged. “I leave my combat one aboard the ship. Bought this basic model and ditched my standard one in a safe place when I realized what Catie had done. Did some finagling, linked it up to my old Alliance account. It’s how I have your ID,” she said wryly, with a bit of a wince. “Does that mean they’re not keeping an eye on that account too? Probably not, but at least I could turn off the recorder and location on this model. It’s the best I could do.”  
  
He nodded absently, still staring at the list. “You sure your new boss would approve of you giving these to me?” he asked, and he’d meant it as a joke but his voice held an edge he hadn’t expected, begrudging her this attempt to win his trust through an act of betrayal.  
  
She met his gaze and hers hardened; she _understood_ , and she said simply, “You’re right. He’d be appalled that I left these out.” And then she sent him another message, this one encoded. “Sort through it at your leisure. Give it to whomever you want. Anderson wouldn’t take it. Wanted plausible deniability.”  
  
“Smart man,” he said.  
  
“You’re not so dumb yourself,” she said, half-smiling again, and for a moment the space between them was _easy_ , as natural as breathing. And then she said, “Address?” and everything went tight again.  
  
He said it and she repeated it, then jerked her head to the door. “You head on. I’ll see you in about an hour.”  
  
“What are you going to do?” he said, stupidly, as if she wasn’t the most capable woman in the galaxy.  
  
She shrugged. “Hang here. I’m a little hungry. Might pick something up. You want me to bring something?”  
  
“Sure,” he said awkwardly.  
  
“Oh,” she said, “and drink this,” and she held up the shotglass. “That’ll kill twenty minutes. And besides, you already paid for it.”  
  
He looked from the glass to her, and the smile she gave him was brittle and broken. “Be careful,” he said at last.  
  
“See you around,” she said, toasting him before tipping the glass to her mouth and draining it in one gulp. He waited, but she didn’t cough, merely closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. Her eyes stayed closed—waiting for him to disappear, he thought, and so he forced his feet to turn around, to turn his back on her and walk out the door, and he didn’t let himself look back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which Kaidan has to clean up the apartment, and Shepard arrives with takeout. (Here Thar Be Feelings.)

An hour.  
  
It took ten minutes to get back to his apartment, and while he stood on the rapid transit he opened his omni-tool and activated the apartment’s cleaning VI, such that when he arrived the kitchen and floor were sparkling and he could hear the soft whir of the shower cleaner. Everything smelled vaguely of lemon. She’d probably notice that. “Switch to unscented,” he said.  
  
“Apologies, sir,” the VI said. “Unscented is unavailable. Your resupply orders are set to default. Would you like to adjust your preferences in the settings menu?”  
  
“No,” he said. “Just turn on the fan.”  
  
He spent another five minutes with his back against the door, breathing deeply and trying to clear his head. When the smell of lemon had lessened, he took two steps into the kitchen, stopped again, and then forced himself to round the corner.  
  
The Murphy bed was still up in the wall from when he’d done PT that morning, which left a couch awkwardly wedged in the corner near the room’s sole window, a narrow floor-to-ceiling slit he usually kept dim to keep out the blazing lights of the ward beyond. He turned off the blackout setting and a thin stream of orange-and-yellow light spilled across the otherwise bare floor. He probably should have gotten a rug or something. Or at least another chair. He’d give her the couch, and he’d sit on the floor. He sat on the floor in idle experimentation. Hard and uncomfortable. Perfect.  
  
He checked the time on his omni-tool. Forty minutes to go. Probably enough time to hunt down a chair. Or—shit, she was bringing food, and he didn’t even have an end table. He opened the closet—maybe he at least had a tray, or something? But all he found was his dirty laundry, and so he shut the closet door and took another deep breath. The apartment was deep in a residential section of the ward, but he could probably find a furniture store with rapid delivery. He should have gotten to know the neighbors.  
  
One of the cleaning robots _whirred_ out of the bathroom and across the floor, blinking cheerfully as it returned to its docking station.  
  
He stared at it, then went and stuck his head in the bathroom. Overwhelmingly lemony. “Activate fan, high,” he said, and ducked his head back out.  
  
Back to the omni-tool, this time to check the local Avina variant for furniture outlets. All were at least half an hour away. Damn. He chewed on his lip, looking around the depressingly empty bedroom. Then he went back to the kitchen and opened every cabinet and drawer, at the end of which he had a fairly accurate kitchen inventory: three spoons, two forks, five steak knives (a gift from his mom, maybe?), three mismatched chopsticks, six travel mugs of various sizes, one actual glass, a set of brown plates that weren’t heatproof and were slightly melted around the edges, a mixing bowl just big enough to hold a whole box of cereal with an appropriate amount of milk, a half-empty thing of dish soap, a sad-looking dishcloth, two towels, and one broken electric frying pan.  
  
He inspected a fork. It didn’t look _dirty_ , but it also hadn’t been touched in three months—he’d just been using the disposable utensils that came with his takeout—and so he dumped all his dishes in the sink and turned on the water. While he waited for it to heat up, he opened his omni-tool and idly selected a few sweep protocols, fed them Shepard’s frequencies, and hooked them into the apartment’s VI. “Happy hunting,” he said, proving to whomever might be watching that he was indeed a little crazy, and then he set to washing the dishes.   
  
Thirty minutes to go, as he plunged his hands into the too-hot water and immediately regretted it. When was the last time he’d washed dishes? As soon as his mind started to wander in pursuit of the question he found himself at his parents’ house— _after_ , and that wasn’t where he needed to be. So he focused very carefully on squirting soap onto the dishcloth, onto lathering it up, on the act of washing one side of a plate, and then another. Simple, mindless work, but _good_ work, his hands constructive and useful, his attention to detail rewarded with something sparkling clean. And nothing high-tech about it, and no ungrateful colonists, or nagging brass, or kind doctors or too-cheerful friends or dead ghosts who turned out to be very much alive.  
  
His omni-tool _dingdingding_ ed, and he glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes to go. He dried his hands on the corner of the towel currently bearing his drippingly clean dishes and checked his notifications, and blinked. One of the frequencies had a match.  
  
He pinpointed its location and then did his best to meander in its direction, activating a thermal scanner on his omni-tool and stretching his arms to the ceiling, then touching his toes, then repeating the stretch—and there, in the uppermost corner, something just barely warmer than everything around it. He scratched his head, yawned, and headed for the bathroom, closing the door behind him.  
  
He sat in the shower, sniffed, determined the lemony scent had mostly faded, and said, “Deactivate fan.” Then he opened up his codebox and started poking at the bug’s feed. Highly encrypted; not a surprise. Probably audio and visual, though, given the size. From that corner it could see the entryway, the entire kitchen, and most of the bedroom. He did an estimate on the time necessary to break the encryption: unknown.  
  
That left him with low-tech standbys: a fan next to the microphone, a shirt over the camera. Or else destroying it completely. He hesitated. Six minutes, which meant she was probably already in the hallway, leaning awkwardly against the wall and counting the seconds in her head. It’s what he would have been doing.  
  
He sent her a message, simply _Should I squash it?_  
  
_Go for it_ , she sent back. _Serves them right_.  
  
So he left the bathroom, returned to the corner, and reactivated his scanner. This time he didn’t bother with theatrics; as soon as he honed in on its location, he hit it with an overload, and without waiting to check if its systems were fried, reached out with his biotics, clenching his fist and crushing it.  
  
And also damaging the wall around it, peeling the metal away to reveal the tangle of wires and piping behind it. But when he brought up his thermal scanner again, the reading came back negative, and a quick frequency scan showed no further transmissions originating from its location. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as a shiver went down his spine. Who knew how long the bug had been there—he was rarely here, and it hadn’t occurred to him that he would need to scan the place, that anyone would be interested in his downtime doings. And _why_ would Cerberus care about watching him mope?  
  
He heard the door open and turned around to see Shepard standing there, holding bags in one hand and raising the other to knock. She was still wearing the coveralls; she had flip-flops on her feet, and he stared at her toes for a second or two longer than strictly necessary.  
  
“Hey,” she said.  
  
“Hey,” he said to her toes, and then he swallowed and cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said, this time to her face.  
  
He stared at her, wondering what she was waiting for; she stared at him, her expression guarded, and then she cocked her head and raised an eyebrow and said, “May I come in?”  
  
“Yeah!” he said. “Yeah, I mean, um, come in, don’t mind the…mess.”  
  
She crossed the threshold, and the door closed behind her. She was looking at the wall behind him. “Found a bug?”  
  
“Just one,” he said. “Had a pretty good view of the whole apartment. But why—?”  
  
She gave him a look that forestalled the rest of his question, a little mocking, a lot annoyed, and then she blew out her breath and said, “So I got takeout from a hanar stand.”  
  
“Hanar?” he said skeptically.  
  
She shrugged. “I think it’s their take on fish and chips? It smells,” and she opened one of the bags and stuck her nose in it and inhaled deeply, “good.”  
  
He almost said _I trust you_ , but the thought tripped several alarm wires in his head and he backed away from it immediately. “Sure,” he said. “Do we need plates?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she said, looking around the kitchen. “But I see you have some.”  
  
The teasing tone in her voice turned his knees to jelly without any warning, and he leaned hard against the wall, crossing his arms. “Forks too,” he said.  
  
“Well,” she said, setting the bags on what little counter space was not devoted to drying dishes, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”  
  
He stayed in the corner as she unboxed what did indeed look like some kind of fried fish with an equally fried starchy accompaniment, unceremoniously dumping each serving onto a plate and sticking a fork in it. She also emerged with disposable napkins and a variety of sauce packets, the names of half of which were in hanar, and a six-pack of beer.  
  
“Do you _have_ a fridge?” she asked, holding the six-pack in her hand and standing in the middle of the kitchen like she _belonged_ there, like she’d never left, and he was drunk and giddy on the sight.  
  
“Just the mini one that came with the place,” he said, pointing and not trusting himself to move from his corner.  
  
She nodded, pulled out two beers, and stuck the rest in the fridge, as if this was completely normal, for a woman who had been dead for two years to be putting beer in his fridge. She _moved_ normally, as if she’d never stopped moving, as if she was just herself and not a reanimated corpse. Maybe a little faster than she’d been, but the way she absently pushed her hair behind her ear was the _same_ , and he couldn’t resolve the paradox, the impossibility of her presence, the absolute normalcy of it. It was a singularity threatening to rip him apart from the inside, and he wasn’t sure what would be left of him when it was done.  
  
“So,” she said, and he blinked and realized he was staring at her and she was very carefully looking around the kitchen, “do you have a table?”  
  
“Um,” he said, caught off-balance again. “No. But we can go sit.”  
  
“Okay,” she said, but he couldn’t bring himself to come any closer to her, and so for a moment they stood there, she awkwardly waiting, he awkwardly unable to move.  
  
Finally she picked up her plate and her beer and rounded the wall, freeing him to slip behind her and grab his own plate and beer and follow her, though he stopped on the threshold, as she was standing in the middle of the room, slowly turning around as she took it in.  
  
“Sparse,” she commented.  
  
“I’m not,” he said, “here. Very often.”  
  
“I get that,” she said, the corners of her eyes crinkling, but there was something pained about it that made him ache.  
  
“You can have the couch,” he offered.  
  
She glanced at him and then turned away, making her way to the couch and curling up in the seat closest to the window. He chose a safe spot in the middle of the floor, a good ten feet from her, and cracked open his beer.  
  
“Cheers,” she said, raising hers to him before taking a swig. She picked up something fried from her plate with her fingers and said, “I think this is fish.” She popped it in her mouth, chewed for a minute with a discerning look on her face, then swallowed and nodded. “Definitely fish.” She took another bite, chewed again, her gaze landing on him as she swallowed. “And yes,” she said, “I can eat _and_ drink.”  
  
“Sorry,” he said, startling out of staring at her and looking down at his own food.  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, but bitterness tinged her words, and for a few minutes they ate in silence, both concentrating on their plates. The food wasn’t bad, all things considered, but then again deep frying covered a multitude of sins. And the beer was decent, given that she’d almost certainly gotten it out of a vending machine. She probably thought it was good. He’d had plans, once, of educating her on that front. He wondered if they would be as futile now as he had suspected they would be back then.  
  
“Have you heard from Catie?” she asked.  
  
He shook his head. “Any idea where they went?”  
  
She shrugged and looked out the window. “Who knows. I’ve been inundated with requests ever since I stepped off the shuttle from Horizon. Everyone’s got loose ends they want to tie up.” A frown passed over her face. “I hope she didn’t get ambitious. Maybe she’s just scanning planets in a far sector or something.”  
  
“Ambitious?” he asked.  
  
“Some people’s loose ends are more like Gordian knots,” she said, and then she rubbed her face before propping her elbow on the arm of the couch and her chin on her palm. “I’m sure they’re fine. She’s capable enough. I hope.”  
  
“She is,” he said, and she glanced at him before returning her gaze to the window. “I haven’t had to work too hard to help her out.”  
  
“You’ve really just been her wingman this whole time?” she said.  
  
He shrugged. “Not the whole time. Only when they needed a photo op, or someone who knew what they were talking about. Anderson managed to keep her SPECTRE assignments light, and they passed off the rest of the time as black ops N7 stuff. When she was hiding out on Elysium they found other things for me to do. Nothing…” he hesitated, fighting off the deep dissatisfaction he’d felt ever since they’d swept the word _Reaper_ under the rug. He was an Alliance soldier, and sometimes that came with a cost. “Nothing too crazy. Investigating rumors of geth activity, things like that.”  
  
“Mm,” she said, and for a moment he looked at her, bathed in the orange glow of the lights beyond, pensive and quiet and curled up on his couch, _where she belonged_ ( _it’s a trap, it’s a lie, they had the apartment bugged_ —  
  
then why would she give that away?)  
  
“What’ll your crew do, when they figure it out?” he asked.  
  
She snorted. “I’m sure half of them helped her pull it off. She must have talked to Joker, at least, or else she’d never have been able to leave the dock.”  
  
“Joker?” he said, startled again.  
  
She looked at him blankly for a moment, and then said, “Oh, right. You asked about the crew, you wouldn’t—I’m sorry,” she said, and she smiled painfully. “It’s just obvious to me that Joker’s flying the _Normandy_ , but I guess that’s…not obvious. Joker’s the pilot,” she said. “We’ve got Doctor Chakwas down in the medbay too. They’re there for each other. And for me.” The smile drifted from her face, leaving on the pain. “And I’ve got Garrus—”  
  
“ _Garrus_?” he said. “Where the hell did you _find_ him? We were staying in touch and then he just—”  
  
“Omega,” she said, and he winced in turn. “He’s one of my Gordian knots. And they seem to think we’ll be able to convince Tali to come—she didn’t sound enthusiastic when we ran into her on Freedom’s Progress, but maybe something’s changed.”  
  
“You were on Freedom’s Progress?” His head was starting to hurt. He took another swig of beer.  
  
“In and out before the Alliance showed,” she said, running her hand through her hair. “They brief you on it for Horizon?” He nodded absently, watching the strands of her hair as they fell in disarray around her face. “So I might have Tali. And that’s it for people who more or less have my back. There’s a few who are in it for the right reasons, taking down the Collectors, saving people, and there’s a couple who are in it for the fight. And then there’s a whole bunch who drank the Cerberus juice and think that Cerberus is the only organization who cares about humanity’s place in the galaxy.” She rubbed her face again. “Some of them are just idiots, and some of them are dangerously intelligent, and I can’t trust any of them.”  
  
Ten feet away was not good enough. He’d have to go to the other end of the galaxy if he didn’t want to find himself reaching for her; as it was, he crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.  
  
She barked a laugh. “The plan? The plan is to get them to trust _me_ , and blow the whole thing up from the inside. And take out the Collectors while I’m at it.” She shrugged, but something in her voice set him on edge, something he’d never heard in her before. “Easy, right? Just convince a bunch of brainwashed zealots that I know what I’m doing better than anyone else, and could they please hand over all their secrets to the authorities, for their own good. I’ll just—do that.”  
  
She went quiet, staring out the window again, hollow and haunted again. He didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, she didn’t sound like she was working _for_ Cerberus; on the other hand, she _really_ didn’t sound like she was working for Cerberus; but ( _wishful thinking gets you nowhere, use your head,_ think _for a minute_ )—  
  
“He wants it,” she said to the window. “He wants it real bad.”  
  
“Huh?” he said.  
  
“ _Him_ ,” she said. “The one in charge. He wants to win, to turn the tables on me. He wants them to pull one over on me. For _me_ to trust _him_. Turn my back on the Alliance. On everything I ever stood for.” She smiled grimly. “Joke’s on him, though. He wanted me put back together just the way I was, and he got it.”  
  
“Did he?” he asked, his mouth dry.  
  
“As far as I can tell,” she said, and then she sighed and at the sound he picked up his beer and kept drinking. “I don’t know everything, I don’t know for sure, but I’m as much the me that I remember being as I ever was, as much as I can be. And he brought me back in the middle of _his_ thing, and wants me to be part of _that_ instead.That’s why they’re watching your apartment, you know. To make sure I don’t go running back to my Alliance roots. To make sure I don’t do _this_ ,” she said, sweeping her hand between them. “Because he sent you and Catie to Horizon so that I’d meet you there, so that I’d see how the Alliance felt about me, how my sister felt, how _you_ —well,” she said, and in the orange light he couldn’t see if she was blushing, but he heard it in her voice.  
  
“Cerberus didn’t send us to Horizon,” he said, but as the words left his mouth they rang hollow as she shook her head.  
  
“Not directly,” she said, “but he pulled strings. It’s what he does, playing everyone like we’re all cards in his hand. It’s…hard to resist. He’s very good at it.”  
  
He blinked. “Have you _talked_ to him?”  
  
“Vid con,” she said. “No idea where he is, but I could probably figure it out if I tried. I’m sure it’s blocked on the _Normandy_ , but a little research here—anyway. Yeah. I’ve seen him. He’s the one who told me he sent you to Horizon. Wanted to make sure I wasn’t still tangled up in past relationships. Which is such _bullshit_ ,” she said, slapping her leg. “He brings back Joker and Chakwas because he knows familiarity breeds complacency. He sends me to get Garrus, because he knows Garrus will follow me and won’t shy away from doing ‘what needs to be done,’ even if there’s actually a better way. And none of them have a reason to hate Cerberus the way Catie does, the way _I_ do. And so he pits me against her, and against you, as if either of you said anything that I haven’t said to myself over and over and _over_ again—”  
  
She pressed her hand to her face and he realized with a jolt that she was crying, her shoulders shaking, and before he knew it he was on his feet, his half-eaten food scattering on the floor. “Hey,” he said.  
  
“And it’s hard,” she said in a raspy voice. “It’s just—it’s a fight, every single day, every single moment, trying to prove to them all that they should follow _me_ and not _him_ , trying to take care of them and all their messes, trying to act like I’ve got my shit together, and the only person asking if I’m okay is Chambers and she’s just a straight-up spy and the only thing I can do is lie to her, lie and say I didn’t care about what Catie said, lie and say I’m free and clear of all past entanglements, and I can’t even go scream into a pillow in my room because EDI is watching every damn thing I do aboard that ship, and meanwhile our colonists are being abducted and the Reapers are behind it which means they’re still coming and I’ve been gone two years and _no one_ has done a _damn_ thing about that because it’s all up to me, apparently, which is the whole reason they brought me back in the first place. _Shit_ ,” she said, and she burst into tears.  
  
“Hey,” he said, and in another moment he was next to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, “hey,” and he smoothed her hair, operating on instinct, watching himself from a distance, fascinated but unable to comprehend what he was doing—because it was, of course, _impossible_ —  
  
She pushed him away, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice still raspy, nose stuffy. “I’m sorry, I—thanks for—for having me, thanks for dinner, but I—”  
  
“What are you—” he asked, reaching for her again, and she was on her feet and backing away.  
  
“Look,” she said, holding up her hands before wiping at her eyes, “I—I appreciate you having me over. Thank you for listening. But I can’t—”  
  
“Can’t what?” he asked, leaning towards her but unable to get up—because if she left, if she was _gone_ again, then he couldn’t—  
  
“It’s been _two years_ , Kaidan,” she said, and the light disappeared from her eyes. “And I have to respect that for—for everyone. For you, for Catie, for everyone who’s been alive and dealing with being alive for two years. I had it easy, I was dead, I didn’t know what was going on, you’ve all been through a lot. I _know_ that. I get it.”  
  
“Don’t—”  
  
“But I woke up three months ago wondering how in the hell they got to me before my O2 ran out,” she said, and he felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. “I woke up asking an empty room if you were all right. I woke up three months ago in a lab the same person I was two years ago when everything went dark and I can’t—you can’t come so close to me,” she said, “because I still—”  
  
She stopped speaking because he stood up, and her eyes were wide and watching him and she looked _terrified_ , and he’d never seen her like this, pale with fright, shaking, clutching the crumbling edge of despair with tears streaming down her cheeks. This wasn’t the Shepard he remembered, quiet and calm and practical; this wasn’t the Shepard he’d fought beside, strong and confident and determined.  
  
But this was the Shepard he _knew_ , the one who’d let him under her armor to hold the woman who hid within, who’d looked to him to be her shoulder when the world fell apart, who understood him without saying a word; this was _her_ , and he _knew_ her, and to know her was to…  
  
And so he went to her, stood directly in front of her, and she closed her eyes and dropped her chin, swallowed hard, fresh tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. “Hey,” he said, and he very carefully reached out and brushed her hair behind her ear, tugging a bit where it had stuck to the tear-tracks on her face, letting his fingers linger.  
  
She shook her head. “You have,” she said, “a whole life you’re living—”  
  
“No, I don’t,” he said, and she opened her eyes and looked up at him, and he shook his head a little. “No, I don’t,” he said again. “Not without you. Not since you left.”  
  
She inhaled sharply and he saw her tremble as she tried not to lean into his fingers and if he didn’t concentrate he would lose himself in the fact that he was _touching her_ , that she was real and solid against his skin. “Well,” she said, her voice still wobbly, “that doctor seemed really nice.”  
  
He snorted a laugh and she did as well, disbelieving and still afraid but, he thought, a little hopeful too. “Shepard,” he said, and he watched as she closed her eyes, as she took a deep, long breath that filled every empty place in her chest; and then she opened her eyes, and looked at him with a look that knew him, and wanted him, and claimed him to his bones, as fiercely and completely as only she could.  
  
“Kaidan,” she said softly, and she tilted her head until her cheek rested against his palm. The touch electrified him, a biotic jolt traveling down his arm before he could stop it and she smiled at him and he was _alive_ , gloriously alive in a way he hadn’t been since—since—and then she said, “What I’m trying to say is—”  
  
He kissed her.  
  
He kissed her, and when their lips met he _burned_ , as if all of his skin had been ripped off and his every nerve had been exposed to the air, raw and unprotected against the sheer flood of _sensation_ , her lips slightly chapped and warm and soft under his, the startled, tentative way she kissed him back, and in that moment his breath left him entirely, his chest at once trapped within a vise and feeling like it would explode as the _pain_ of touching of her—of _touching_ her, of the grief of two years of knowing he would never touch her again, of knowing he’d never be able to taste her salty kisses—this was _impossible_ and _real_ and it _hurt_ and he broke the kiss and pressed his forehead into hers, desperately trying to draw breath and holding onto her as if part of him still expected her to pass through his fingers.  
  
He felt her fingers on his face—and she’d never been _delicate_ , shy and fumbling, yes, and gentle too, but now her fingers fluttered against his cheeks, his jaw, and as her shoulders shook he realized he was crying too, crying harder than he’d let himself in _years_ , and he heard her voice, shushing him, her fingers skittering across his skin, coaxing his chin up, tilting his mouth back to hers.  
  
He gave in, and the moment she kissed him she went up on her toes, her hands grasping the front of his shirt and pulling him into her, her mouth hard and desperate against his, wanting to promise eternity and knowing she couldn’t and his hands found their way into her hair, grasping and holding her there and now he accused her with kisses, equally hard and equally desperate, barely letting her pull away for a breath, _you left me, you_ left.  
  
_I’m sorry_ , she kissed him back, her hands on his face again as she held him there, as she pressed her lips against his and lingered, then tugged on his lower lip as she slowly drew back.  
  
They stared at each other, and her eyes and her nose and her cheeks were red and blotchy and her lips were parted as she shuddered for breath; and he was _angry_ , fists clenched in her hair too tightly, chest heaving as if he was coming from a fight, angry and shaking and tears still running down his cheeks as he stared at her because how dare she, how _dare_ she come back where she belonged when she was only going to _leave again_. Now or later, it didn’t matter; everyone left, eventually, and he’d lost her once and one day he’d have to lose her again, one way or another, and how _dare_ she hurt him like that.  
  
He was angry and she saw, her eyes searching his face, her brow furrowed as her lips moved for a moment as if she was going to kiss him again. And then she caught her breath and said, “I’m sorry—” and she made the slightest movement as if to step away, but his hands in her hair kept her in place “—I can—I didn’t—I’ll go—”  
  
“ _No_ ,” he said, horrified, and in the next moment he had her wrapped in his arms, his hand cradling her head against shoulder, holding her tightly enough to squeeze the air from her lungs. “I’m sorry,” he said into her hair, mussing it with his fingers, pressing damp kisses into it, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”  
  
“ _You’re_ sorry,” she said, her voice muffled and laughing and edging towards hysterics. “I _died_ , Kaidan.”  
  
“I know,” he said, his chest frozen for a moment, thawed under the irrepressible warmth of her against him. He swallowed back his first response, and said instead, shakier than he wanted to be, “Try—try not to again?”  
  
She laughed and he heard her tears. “I’ll try,” she said, but her voice choked and cut her off, and she trembled in his arms. “I’ll try,” she whispered, and then she turned her head and buried her face in his neck.  
  
He closed his eyes and reveled in the feeling of her right _there_ , her cheek hot and sticky, her nose pressed against his skin as she sniffed, and sniffed again, her exhalation long and warm and a little tickly. “That’s all I can ask,” he said, half-laughing but his grip on her tightened, as if demonstrating how tenuous his grasp on sanity really was.  
  
She exhaled a laugh in turn, and then tilted her head so that her lips met the skin of his neck, and if he’d thought he’d been burning before that was nothing compared to the flames tearing through him now, desperation and long-buried craving and insatiable _need_ raking across his nerves, burning in his bones. “I’ll try,” she said again, her mouth moving against his skin, and his hands moved across her coveralls as if he could tear them off her.   
  
She kissed his neck and his hands clenched, bunching up excess fabric in his fists in an extremely unsatisfying manner, and he felt her smile, heard the hitch of a laugh in her voice. She kissed him again, slow, lingering, her head unyielding as he tried to turn his to nudge her mouth back to his. “Good,” he said, half-aware of the complaint in his voice. “So for now…”  
  
“For now,” she said, drawing away from his neck and _no_ , he wanted to say, come _back_ , “I’m,” and he successfully captured her mouth with his, muffling her as she tried to talk around his lips, “here.”  
  
“Mm,” was all he managed to say, running a hand up into her hair again as he kissed her again and again and _again_ , suddenly light-headed and giddy, because they all might die tomorrow but tonight he could kiss her as much as he wanted, could pull her body tight against his and feel the stuttered gasp of her taking a breath against his mouth, could tease her lip with his teeth and feel her _move_ against him, her hands pressing against his chest as she slid them up, along his neck, into his hair in turn, her kisses growing more insistent until she abruptly tore her mouth from his and pushed against his chest.  
  
He’d forgotten—how could he have forgotten? and the icy grief stabbed him again—how strong she was and he took a stumbling step back and gaped at her, blinking and trying to clear his vision as she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and then ran them through her hair. “Wha—?”  
  
“I don’t,” she said, breathing as hard as he was, pulling her hair away from her head and finally looking at him, “mean to presume, but—” and she took a deep, shuddering breath, and closed her eyes “—it feels relevant—”  
  
“What?” he asked, his hands landing on her waist as he stumbled towards her.  
  
“Where,” she said, stuttering as he yanked her towards him and his hips collided with hers, “oh—do you—” and he tried to kiss her and she smacked a hand over his mouth and stared up at him with wild laughing eyes “— _sleep_?”  
  
“Oh,” he said against her hand, and then he started kissing it as her mouth moved soundlessly until she recovered enough to slide her hand down to his neck to pull him in for another kiss. “That’s—”  
  
“I mean,” she said breathlessly, her kisses haphazardly landing across his mouth and cheeks and jaw, “don’t get me wrong, it’s a very clean floor and a very soft couch, but—”  
  
“No,” he said, and he took a step forward and kept pulling her towards him as she stumbled back until she wrapped her arms around his neck and he wrapped his around her waist and lifted her until her feet dangled and for a moment he buried his face in her sternum and _breathed_ , felt the hard heaving of her dead lungs, heard the hammering of her dead heart beating in her warm chest, _impossible_ , and for a moment the grief paralyzed him because how could he—how could he let himself _do this_ again, risk losing her and himself and everything he’d worked so hard to—to—  
  
And then her hands were on his cheeks, tugging until he tilted his head up and looked up at her looking down at him, her face haunted with the echoes of the same doubts, the same fears, except that _she_ was worried about hurting _him_ ; he could see it in the naked desperation in her eyes, the overwhelming _want_ and _need_ mixing with the knowledge that she could break him with a breath, and lurking in the depths he saw a self-loathing that nearly stopped his heart.   
  
He shook his head, and she whispered, “I’m sorry—”  
  
“No,” he said, “ _no_ ,” and he set her back on the floor so he could kiss her forehead, her eyebrow, could whisper in her ear, “No regrets.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said again.  
  
“You’re _perfect_ ,” he said, and she hiccupped a laugh that might have been a sob, “and I wouldn’t trade—I—”  
  
Words failed him as she looked up at him, the light in her eyes not quite daring to hope but waiting, and he ran his fingers through her hair, tucked it behind her ear, wiped her tears with his thumb. “What was it?” he asked, and her eyebrows rose in a quizzical expression. “‘This is what will never happen again’?”  
  
Her lips quirked in a painful half-smile, and how far they’d come from that night, from that moment, death at their doorstep and mutiny at their back and them colliding on the threshold, promising a safe harbor, come what may.   
  
“Well,” he said, his voice low and rough as he traced her ear again, “turns out I was wrong.” She took a deep breath, shuddering, and he said, “Lucky me.”  
  
She blew it out in a long sigh. “I don’t know if being with me counts as lucky,” she said weakly. “Seems a little more—”  
  
“I’m the luckiest man alive,” he said firmly, and she laughed at him, and sure it was a little ridiculous but she was smiling now, shaking her head as she looked at him, as the laughter and the disbelief chased the fear and worry from her eyes. “And hey,” he said, touching her cheek with his fingers, his chest aching, “loving you is worth it.”  
  
She caught her breath and looked at him like a starving woman suddenly presented with a feast, hope and a tremulous joy blossoming in her eyes. “Hey,” she said, shy and stumbling and overwhelmed and his face split into a smile, “you’re not a bad catch yourself.”  
  
“Thanks,” he said dryly, and she laughed and suddenly she was in his arms again, kissing him soundly.  
  
“I love you,” she said, and then she kissed him and said it again, “I love you,” fierce and combative, as if challenging the whole galaxy to try to defy it, and then she kissed him again, long, hard, her tongue and her lips leaving him dizzy and falling after her, trying to keep up, and then she pulled away and said, “Now _where the hell is your bed_?”  
  


“Ah—” he said, but she kept kissing him, so eventually he gave up on trying to issue a voice command and wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet again and carrying her to the wall. He set her down and trapped her against it, bracing himself with his hands on either side of her head. With his left fingers he hit the button to lower the bed, and he pulled away from kissing her to watch her expression as she noticed the movement out of the corner of her eye, raised her eyebrow, and turned her head to watch its progress.  
  
“Classy,” she commented as it settled, the whirring gears coming to a stop. And then she looked back to him and _moved_ against him and he crashed his mouth back to hers and his hands to her body, not resisting when she lightly shoved him a step or two back, following him. And then she grabbed his shirt in two fists and with her impossible strength dragged him over to the bed, pulled him down after her as she landed atop it, laughing into his mouth as she bounced and he tripped over their tangled feet.  
  
“Ow,” he said, and for a moment he pulled back to look at her, her hair spilling over the tightly made sheets, her face flushed, her lips pressed into a smile, just as he’d thought he’d never see her again, and he felt dizzy with the thought, gratitude and terror whirling in equal parts through his mind.  
  
“Hey,” she said gently, touching his cheek with her fingers, her fingertips pressing against his skin just enough to draw him closer. “Come here.”  
  
He’d followed her into worse places.  
  
In fact he’d followed her into hell, first in battle and then in the long darkness of two years of grief and guilt and regret. But this was a different inferno, coming to her now and burning up in her presence, in her hands and her mouth, her wry smile and startled laugh, the tears in her eyes and the sigh in her voice, letting her set every part of him aflame even as she pulled him close and wrapped him up with the same heat, the same intensity. He melted into her skin until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began, until her breath became his exhalation, until the world contracted to a pinpoint of light that burst forth and consumed them both, the shockwave shattering him into so many shards of glass as he surrendered—to the grief, to the pain, to his unquenchable need for her, to the very love which tore him apart.  
  
Afterwards she clung to him, digging into him with all her strength, whispering his name in his ear, and he buried his face in the pillow next to her and cried.  
  
He felt her lean her head against his, felt tears fall from the corners of her eyes and soak into his hair, and then the shaking of his shoulders turned to laughter at the absurdity of—existence, probably, fractured and broken as he was.  
  
He felt her snort, turned his head enough to see her turning hers enough to give him a side-eye. “I’d ask if you’re all right,” she said, “but, you know, I’m not either.”  
  
“Sorry,” he said, feeling his face stuck between a grin and a grimace, and she shook her head.  
  
“I mean,” she said, “so we’re both wrecks. There’s worse things. At least everything still works.”  
  
He digested that for a moment, then turned on his side enough to prop his head on his hand, momentarily distracted. “Was there a question of that?”  
  
“Well,” she said, and then she paused, looking at the ceiling. “They said they wanted to bring me back same as I was—guess that excludes cybernetics—anyway—but I’m sure they had priorities and I doubt… _this_ ,” and she was still shy about it, naked in his bed and lightly glistening with their mingled sweat, and stars above, he loved her, “was high on their list. And they woke me up early so there was a chance things hadn’t been…hooked up.”  
  
“They woke you up early?” he asked, still distracted, grateful for the distraction, his free hand reaching out and trailing along her shoulder, down her arm.  
  
“Yeah,” she said, still staring at the ceiling. “Someone went rogue, tried to take out the rest of the team. They hadn’t quite finished growing all my skin.” She glanced at him, and he saw her trying to be casual, trying to gauge his reaction. “Cut me open and I glow.”  
  
“No shit,” he said, treading upon the impossibly thin ice she laid before him.  
  
“Yeah,” she said. “I get too angry, my eyes go a little red. It’s freaky. Doc has a treatment for it, but there’s no cure for the underlying condition of _having cybernetic eyes_.” She sighed and closed them, a line appearing between her eyebrows.  
  
He went on caressing her arm, staring at the space between them and seeing the yawning void that stretched beneath them, the shattered pieces of their very selves suspended at the opening, waiting to fall at the first opportunity.   
  
He wouldn’t let her fall.  
  
So he’d have to gather them up, fit them back together, trade some of his for some of hers; there’d still be cracks, but maybe they’d be close enough to whole to muddle through. He’d come this far; he’d chosen to try.  
  
“Well,” he said finally, focusing back on her face, watching for a moment as a few more tears slid down her temples, “I’d say it works pretty well.”  
  
She turned her head a little towards him. “Yeah?”  
  
“Can’t complain,” he said, and then he allowed his hand to drift up her arm, reached up to stroke her cheek. “Though I miss the scar.”  
  
She blew out a sigh, her gaze intent on his face, and he let his hand linger. “You know,” she said, “once the initial glowing thing resolved itself, I kept looking in the mirror and seeing Catie. It’s—it’s hard to feel like you’re really yourself,” she said, “the way they say you are, when you look at yourself and all the little things that were part of you—the proof that your memories really happened—are just— _gone_.”  
  
“Mm,” he said, and she was still staring at him, begging reassurance, and so he pressed his hand against her cheek and shifted until he could kiss her, softly, gently, pulling away just enough to bump her nose with his. “So,” he said, leaning his forehead into hers, “we make new ones.”  
  
“You sure you want to?” she whispered, as if he hadn’t just poured his heart and soul into her and been undone in the process.  
  
Or maybe as if he had, and she was afraid he regretted it. And it _hurt_ to see her like this, so unsure of herself, unsure of anything, and he wasn’t in much shape to be an anchor; but he was all he had to offer.  
  
So he said, “Absolutely.” And then, for honesty’s sake, he said, “I mean, you’re not the only one who needs patching up. But hey,” and he drew back, tilted her chin up until she was looking at him again, “I’m here, and we’ll do it together.” She stared at him for a long moment, her expression fathomless, and so he closed the gap again until their lips were scarcely apart. “I’m here, and I love you,” he said. “Yeah?”  
  
She held herself away from him for the space of one breath, and then another, and he waited for her, waited until she finally nodded, her forehead rubbing against his. “Love you too,” she said, and then she blew out her breath and it hit him in the face and he coughed and pulled back instinctively. “Sorry,” she said, and he moved to wave it off but she continued, “I just…I haven’t had anyone I could trust, lately. And everything’s all—”  
  
He put a hand over her mouth. “In the past,” he said firmly. “We’re here now, and this is where we start moving forward.”  
  
She looked at him, eyes wide and startled as he kept his hand over her mouth, feeling her open it to protest, then shut it again. “Okay,” she said finally, her voice muffled. “So where do we go?”  
  
He released her in order to flop onto his back, using the hand closest to her to pull her closer. She acquiesced until she rested her head on his chest, her hand idly roaming his torso, and he said, “Hell if I know.”  
  
She laughed. “Well,” she said, nuzzling him, “this is as good a place as any, for now.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, and she flattened her hand against his chest and sighed, a full-body breath that left her melting into him; and then she breathed again, and again, and a moment later he realized she’d fallen asleep.  
  
And that was the same, that soldier’s sleep, grabbing a few winks whenever and wherever she could. And she’d sounded so tired; who knew the last time she’d been able to sleep without worrying about someone watching her. He tilted his head enough to see the top of her head, the slope of her forehead, the tip of her nose; and that view was the same, too.  
  
She was _here_ , in his arms, alive and loving him, and he—loved her. Stars above, he loved her.  
  
He sighed, just as deeply as she had, and discovered he was, in fact, totally exhausted. He picked up his head enough to kiss the crown of her head, then dropped back to his pillow, tightened his arm around her, and fell asleep.


End file.
